Maxine Peake: From rugby league to starring actress

By MAUREEN PATON

Last updated at 19:03 09 November 2007

She found fame as brassy Veronica in Shameless, and is about to play a Northern Cinderella, but Maxine Peake says her distinctive accent hasn't always been an asset. Here she talks about being an outsider, feeling compelled to lose weight, and why she's still single

There's a buzz in the business about actress Maxine Peake, who seems to be at the top of every British casting director's wish list.

Yet judging by the way she settles chummily next to me on a hotel sofa, the attention doesn't seem to have gone to her canny head.

That's because Maxine, 34, had a life before stardom: this dainty leading lady with the Jean Seberg haircut, heart-shaped face and Twiggy-like eyes was once a heavyweight teenage tomboy in the Wigan Ladies amateur rugby league, and aged ten was a passionate picket-line supporter of the miners during the strike in the mid-1980s.

Scroll down for more...

Two actresses made their names in Shameless, Channel 4's scandalously funny and influential drama series about a strangely lovable family of tearaways.

The main female role of Fiona was played by Anne-Marie Duff, while Fiona's neighbour, bawdy, blond cleaner Veronica, was played with maximum bleach, energy and impudence by Maxine.

Anne-Marie has gone on to portray Elizabeth I on TV in The Virgin Queen and St Joan on stage, while Maxine has been equally distinctive as Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders on ITV last year, and earlier this year played Tracey Temple, John Prescott's mistress, in Confessions of a Diary Secretary.

It's hardly surprising that Maxine and Anne-Marie have become good friends in real life, drawn to each other as working-class outsiders.

"It's not always been that easy if you are not classed as conventional, and with such a strong accent as mine you have to go the extra mile," explains Bolton-born Maxine in her throaty voice.

"At drama school in London, it was suggested that I lose my accent – though it was never forced upon me."

And as she says herself, "The North is part of who I am. One of these days I would like to settle down with a family in a nice ramshackle old farmhouse in the shadow of the West Pennines, because I'm a bit of a country girl."

Having also been a leisure-centre lifeguard and a member of the Young Communist League before going to drama school at 21, it's no wonder the class-conscious Maxine described the affair between Prescott and Temple as "a classic master-servant thing", although she now admits, "That was me jumping on my political soapbox a bit, which was silly because it wasn't a political piece. And I did feel a bit guilty after Prescott's heart scare…"

With her natural sympathy for life's underdogs, she seems perfectly cast for the BBC's updated version of Cinderella.

James Nesbitt plays the charismatic Professor Prince and Maxine is Cindy, the bright though uneducated cleaner who fights off the female competition to become his assistant.

She had originally auditioned for the part of one of the Ugly Sisters – not as improbable as it sounds, since in this version they have been reinvented as outwardly pretty but horribly snobbish students who despise and patronise Cindy.

Maxine herself had become something of a Cinders figure after getting rejected by all the amateur drama groups in Bolton and Manchester, then trying in vain for three years to get into Manchester Polytechnic Theatre School and London's Guildhall School of Drama.

"There is something of Cinderella in my story," she acknowledges.

"My mum used to say, “Why are you still doing it? You've had rejection after rejection, so maybe you should try something else.” But I think deep down you sort of know your destiny," says Maxine, who at 21 finally applied – as a joke – for the most prestigious drama school of all, Rada. She was accepted.

"Cindy is the first part I've done where the clothes are more like me. She's a bit grungy, with Birkenstock shoes and tights with socks on top.

"They were aiming for the Amélie-style European eccentric look," explains Maxine, a big fan of vintage fashions.

Yet the role of Cindy – not to mention that of a Marilyn Monroe lookalike in I Am Bob, a forthcoming short film starring Bob Geldof – would never have been offered to her had Maxine not starred in a real-life transformation by shedding five stone a decade ago.

In her first big break after Rada, Maxine had been cast as podgy Twinkle in Victoria Wood's sitcom Dinnerladies after Victoria saw her profiled in an edition of The South Bank Show about drama-school hopefuls.

Although Maxine was a great success as Twinkle, Victoria – who has had her own struggles with weight in the past – advised her to shed the pounds in future to avoid being offered only "fat parts".

So at the age of 24 Maxine joined WeightWatchers and started to reveal her beautiful bone structure.

Ten years on, she doesn't like to dwell on what can seem like the frivolous subject of dieting. "I was 15 stone with high blood pressure, so it was important to lose weight because of that – as well as having a wider range of parts open to me," explains the 5ft 7in Maxine.

"The weight just dropped off, but I was 24, and I suppose it's much easier when you're young."

Yet Maxine admits, "I didn't particularly like my new size at first. It did take me a while to get used to it.

"You've got a new body and it's very strange – it's like a new you, a new skin you're in.

"There's something about weight that's a protection – both physical and psychological – and I had always hidden behind being the big funny girl.

"I'd been the class clown at school.

"And we are so obsessed with weight these days that it upsets me," she adds.

"Why are we so obsessed? Everybody is the way they are."

So modest is Maxine that she seems unaware of how naturally pretty she is.

"I always think I'm not a big hit with the opposite sex," says Maxine, who is single and lives in Southeast London.

"My fault is that I surround myself with much more beautiful friends; my mum says I've done it all my life.

"Blokes spend their time looking at them rather than me," she adds, laughing.

"I got my first boyfriend at the age of 23."

With no love life to speak of for years, instead Maxine immersed herself in her work.

"Every job I did, I would have a big crush on someone," she recalls.

"That's the way I worked, I suppose, and I just had to come to terms with it because you do sort of open yourself up if you're playing someone in a relationship.

"You are dealing with emotions and you are very raw, so you probably show people more about yourself than you would otherwise.

"But I'm not into any of that now, I'm quite straightforward," she adds briskly.

"It's taken my family a while to adjust to my career, since they don't know much about the business – it was a bit of a strain for them at first because they worried about how precarious acting can be," she admits, adding that she is grateful there was no financial strain on her family during her training, as she was awarded the Patricia Rothermere Scholarship at Rada.

Her mother Glynis is a part-time careworker and her father Brian a former lorry driver who now works in the electrical industry.

They split up when Maxine was nine (she has a sister, Lisa, a policewoman, who is nine years older), but she says that "they always made things stable for me because there was a great support system with my grandparents and I saw a lot of my dad too.

"That's how I became the class clown at school, because I was always trying to make him laugh; he's very witty."

When her mother met a new partner when Maxine was 15, and moved to a house several miles from her school, Maxine chose to go and live with the widowed Jim instead until she had done her A-levels.

"If it wasn't for my granddad, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. I don't know what I'd do without him – he's extraordinary, and all my friends fall in love with him.

"He's my mum's stepdad and he was 15 years younger than my nan.

"He's a Communist, very into self-education, and he was always introducing me to fantastic characters when I was young. It just opens another world," she explains.

"He always says to me, “Can you get more parts where you smile more?”" Indeed, so important to Maxine is Jim's opinion that she made sure he didn't see her semi-nudity in the internet porn episode of Shameless when Veronica does the ironing topless in front of a webcam in order to earn some extra money.

"I was back home and watching that episode with Jim, so I said to him, “In a few minutes you're going to have to go into the other room because there's no way I could let you watch it.” I was in such shock when I saw it myself that I thought, “Well, I'll never do anything like that again.” But then it would depend on the part, obviously – if it was a fantastic part…" she says, laughing.

"It was made very clear there was this scene in it when I auditioned for Veronica, but it was such a brilliant script that I said, “Oh, I'll do it” – and Anne-Marie was so supportive that day."

Soon Maxine will be seen as a policewoman alongside Full Monty actor Mark Addy in the new ITV1 comedy-drama Bike Squad by the writer Guy Jenkin (Outnumbered, Drop the Dead Donkey), and on the big screen as the ex-wife of a club bouncer in what she calls her "first proper feature film", an underworld drama called Clubbed that stars Neil Morrissey.

"I do a lot of standing on the doorstep shouting – yes, I can certainly do angry," grins the girl who made the brawling Veronica famous.

She may not be smiling in every role as her grandfather would like, but our latest Cinderella is clearly having herself a ball.